jsguyrus

Well yes, but that was back before DL/AA/UA went revenue based. The landscape has changed, not for the better, with all airline frequent flyer plans. Personally since my business doesn't pay for anything other than main cabin and they are pretty cheap about that, I am happy to stay with a mileage based plan, even if it costs partners. And you can still get to most cities in the US on an award ticket via AA.

tusphotog

Is one flight a day considered a lot?

Some examples flown on 3/26/19:

SEA-RDU 1x flight/day
SFO-RDU 1x flight/day
LAX-BOS 1x flight/day
SFO-ORD 1x flight/day
LAX-ORD 1x flight/day
SEA-BNA 1x flight/day
SEA-TPA 1x flight/day
SFO-BNA 1x flight/day
PDX-BOS 1x flight/day

eponymous_coward

Probably as much as considering flights to ORD and BNA "transcons", or US MSAs ranked 36th or 43rd "major". I mean, really, do you expect AS to run 5x daily to TPA, RDU & BNA from all their hubs and focus cities?

But hey... let's look at BNA-West Coast.

UA: 2x SFO
AA; 1x LAX
WN: 3x LAX
DL: 1x LAX
AS: 1x SEA, 1x SFO

AS is the smallest airline of all five of these airlines, and they're up there with UA and WN with multiple daily frequencies, and the only airline serving from multiple hubs.

Let's try BWI as an example of a larger MSA

UA: 2x SFO
AA: nada
WN: 4x SAN, 4x LAX, 1x OAK
DL: nada
AS: 1x SFO, 1x SEA, 1x SAN, 1x LAX
NK: 1x LAX

Again, AS is up there with the airline that actually de facto hubs at BWI (WN) in serving from multiple West Coast destinations.

Let's try TPA:

UA: 1x UA
AA: nada
WN: 1x LAX
DL: 1x LAX
AS: 1x SEA

Looks like folks serving them from their strong West Coast hubs reasonably well...

I get it, AS has run away from places where the legacies and heavy competition will murder them: BOS, ORD, DEN, NYC premium. And they obviously don't punch well at covering second-tier midcon and East Coast destinations, because the demand for LAX/SFO/SEA-PNS nonstops isn't likely to show up and there is no real logical place for a midcon hub anytime soon (they could spend 10 years accreting market share in SFO/LAX/SJC/SAN and still be in a solid second place in all of those cities). The loss of AA/DL hurts (though the DL side of that was baked in the cake when DL decided they wanted a SEA hub). But WN spent decades doing this kind of strategy (incremental market share over time, finding niches to exploit) with ZERO international feed. It seems to work OK for them.

milypan

Please stop lumping LAX/SFO in with SEA. I understand you didn't start it—we're just haphazardly throwing around the term "West Coast"—but as the investor slides show, AS has ~4x as many flights out of SEA as it does out of LAX or SFO. These are qualitatively different networks. And that's before even considering that the competition will be much stronger ex-LAX/SFO simply due to the much larger markets in those two MSAs.

sltlyamusd

VegasGambler

I actually think that a lot of Southwest flyers would be better off on AS (or, at least, they would have been before premium economy)

I think that many of them don't understand same-day changes. I say that they can do a SDC on AS for $25 (intra-CA) and they tell me that it's free on Southwest. I explain that they have to pay the fare difference (and same day tickets are usually expensive) and they tell me that you have to do that on all airlines. Basically, they don't understand SDC.

I'm not sure how an ariline can effectively advertise something like this. People don't like the idea of paying a $25 fee (because fees are "extra") but a $150 fare difference seems "fair" because you're moving to a "more expensive flight".

eponymous_coward

Why can't I lump them in with PDX, SJC and SAN, then? Nobody is seriously arguing that AS's expansion in CA is close to over. But WN didn't show up in PHX/LAS in the early 80's with 50 flights a day, either. Why aren't accretive adds to the current network ex-California going to work like they did for WN and B6 as they gathered momentum?

milypan

That's reasonable. I'm just saying don't conflate the network they have ex-SFO or ex-LAX with what they have ex-SEA. What they have ex-SEA is competitive, on the basis of the network alone. What they have ex-SFO/LAX is not.

eponymous_coward

Right, but do you reasonably expect an airline with 30-40% of the fleet size of the majors (not to mention a smaller amount of regional) to have 100% of the network of the majors? Or can we see where they are in a few years?

(They're WAY better at serving more of CA's markets than VX ever was, thanks to strong PNW presence that creates some natural market share + a presence in SJC and SAN that VX never had.)

WN doesn't serve JFK. They don't serve MYR, BTV or VPS (from that earlier poster's point). They didn't need to serve any of those places to be a successful business. So is the argument that AS is doooooomed, terribly doooooomed because they don't serve a lot of markets that majors do, and their position is as a scrappy #2 in a lot of CA markets instead of a #1 ? Or what?

milypan

I can't speak for others, but I'm not arguing that they're doomed. I'm just saying don't expect them to get a lot of traction with "elites" outside of SEA (and maybe ANC?). But hopefully they don't need that in order to have a sustainable business...certainly that's what management has claimed with their "leisure enthusiast"-focused strategy and "relevance" metrics.

eponymous_coward

I don't think they're trying for the AA/UA/DL corporate traveler market out of SFO/LAX. No international outside of partners (and even at that there are real holes; Europe is "some of OW and a random assortment of LCCs"), no real way to get to second-tier USA locations outside of very expensive AA codeshares, no premium transcon. It doesn't make sense. They get some of that out of SEA (though they certainly didn't start out in the 80's post-deregulation with 55% SEA market share), but it's more a case of what they've built over time. But those weren't WN or B6 strengths either.

My guess is AS is going to keep chipping away at SFO/LAX marketshare much like how they built up SJC and SAN; accretive, occasional route adds over time. The bones of what VX left them help because they'll have some markets out of that.

notquiteaff